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Mat Dickie, independent game developer known for his work in the wrestling niche, has taken his retro-style mobile and tablet game, Wrestling Revolution, to the console. Created using Adobe Game Developer Tools and downloaded more than one million times across Android and iOS, Wrestling Revolution offers players the biggest wrestling universe with more than 350 characters – and dozens of them in the ring at one time. Now available on the new OUYA console, Wresting Revolution can now be enjoyed by fans on their TV, the genre’s natural home.

OUYA provides an open development experience so that, like Dickie, any creator can publish a game for a console to be played on TVs.

“I was excited about bringing the gamepad-controlled, multi-player experience to consoles. Wrestling games have a proud history on consoles from the NES and SNES to the N64 and PlayStation. But those doors can be hard to open for an independent developer like me,” he says. “Consoles are the genre’s natural home, so on OUYA I’m reaching new audiences that don’t typically play PC or mobile games. What I like most about it is that I have a stable platform for the first time in my career, and I know that players will have the same experience as me.”

In taking Wrestling Revolution to the OUYA platform, Dickie made sure that it wasn’t just a mobile port to the console. The game fully supports controllers of all kinds—right down to analogue sticks for precise movement. The multi-player modes are also exclusive to consoles. There’s an option to play in either “Versus” or “Co-Op” mode, which will involve up to four human players.

“Wrestling Revolution is just one of the first Adobe AIR games on OUYA,” he says. “Some perceptive AIR developers had everything in place ahead of OUYA’s launch which helped me get going quickly.”

Wrestling Revolution climbed over 200 places in OUYA’s O-Rank in its first week of release and jumped into the top 50 games in its second week. The game is being downloaded hundreds of times per day with 10% of players opting to purchase the full game.

“The OUYA audience is obviously a lot smaller than on established systems, where over a million people are playing my mobile apps. However, the conversion rate is higher. The OUYA audience likes to invest in games and support their evolution,” says Dickie. “That ensures that my first game won’t be my last.”

As we move into 2013, we’re excited to make investments that support the incredible, ongoing momentum in social and mobile gaming that Adobe has championed for more than a year. Flash technologies underpinned the success of many game developers from Fresh Planet to Zynga, both in the browser and on mobile, and you can see how Adobe Gaming technologies deliver the reach needed to improve game monetization in the graphic below.

In December, the Adobe Gaming team launched the first ever, packaged Adobe Game Developer Tools via the Creative Cloud. Within 2 weeks of their availability, we had over 20,000 downloads of the tools and more than 12,000 views of the Adobe Scout video! Today, we’re making it even easier for game developers by removing a key barrier to delivering games targeting Flash Player – from this point forward, the XC APIs are no longer classified as a Premium Feature for Flash Player, which means developers can use them royalty-free without a separate license from Adobe. Developers and publishers that have published content using the XC APIs do not need to make any changes to their content to reflect this change in status for the XC APIs, and we expect this adjustment to make it even easier for developers to use Flash and AIR as their cross-device game development workflow of choice. To find out more, check out the updated FAQ here.

In addition, we’re also announcing added funding for the Away Foundation, a non-profit Community Interest Company based in the UK, focusing on building and maintaining free and open source software resources for online and mobile games and applications. This funding will support the development and release of Away3D 4.1 and an exciting new open source project for Away Builder. Away Builder 1.0 is the first open source tool project for the foundation, and will provide a visual tool for designers that exposes and edits custom Away3D settings and object properties on 3D assets without the need for coding. And just last week, we updated the Gaming SDK, which includes the latest Away3D, Starling and Feathers frameworks as well as updates for the latest runtime releases. Working with Away has already produced several exciting advances for game developers using Adobe technologies and will continue to forward the delivery of rich games targeting mobile and the browser for years to come. Starforce Delta is a great example of a beautiful 3D RPG built with Away3D and now available on the web in open beta and coming soon as a mobile app. And if a touch of the 19th century is more your thing, check out Jane Austen Regency Dressup, as well as other games using the Away3D framework on the Away3D showcase.

We also wanted to highlight a handful of great games that really reflect the breadth of creativity using Adobe Gaming technologies and show off the skills and passion of the developers who made them. Four games using Adobe Gaming technologies were recently announced as Independent Game Festival (IGF) finalists! Incredipede, a beautifully illustrated browser-based game; Dys4ia, an autobiographical game about undergoing hormone replacement therapy as a trans woman; Intrusion 2, a sci-fi action platform game; and Super Hexagon, a fast-paced reflex game where you’ve gotta be great to survive 20 seconds.

And just in case you didn’t get your fill of zombies in 2012, check out GREE’s Zombie Jombie in the iOS App Store. GREE used PhoneGap Build – another Adobe Gaming technology – for this wildly addictive RPG card game that will surely have you selling for brains. It’s shaping up to be a wide open year ahead for Adobe Gaming, and we’re looking forward to conquering new worlds with you!

In creating BINGO Blitz, the developers at Buffalo Studios have cut out the crowded, smoky rooms and uncomfortable chairs and delivered a digital bingo experience that everyone can enjoy. Using Adobe Gaming technology such as Flash Pro and Adobe AIR, the team has ported the original Facebook incarnation of the game to Android and iOS platforms. With a player base of over 16 million game installs, Barry Sohl, senior vice president, knew the team could still push their game to a wider audience: “Players today demand high-performance, cross-platform experiences on every device. Adobe Game Developer Tools deliver on that promise.”

Adobe technology has allowed Buffalo Studios to extend their intuitive gaming experience from desktop to mobile platforms. The game’s smooth visuals were created using the Adobe Creative Suite and the framework, user interface, and overall experience were built entirely in Adobe Flash Professional. Keeping the entire development pipeline under one umbrella has allowed a single development team to release weekly content updates, seasonal Bingo rooms, and bring new features to market more quickly.

BINGO Blitz offers hundreds of simultaneous players a chance to participate in a modern, mobile version of Bingo that has already been downloaded over 1 million times. The experience developing and porting the feature-rich game to multiple platforms has made a believer out of Buffalo Studios for their next projects. “We are basing all our current and future titles on Adobe Game Developer Tools.” After the success of BINGO Blitz, we can’t wait to see what Buffalo Studios comes out with next! You can learn more about their streamlined development process here.

We just wanted to take a quick moment and congratulate SongPop for their amazing debut this year! They were recently named by Facebook as the #1 game in 2012 among some very stiff competition. Since launching the game in 2012, FreshPlanet has amassed more than 60 million users and secured the honor of the #5 game downloaded in the Apple App Store this year.

We’re happy that FreshPlanet choose Adobe Gaming technologies, including Adobe AIR, to deliver this wildly popular game. For more on SongPop, check out our previous blog post, which links to their full Adobe Success Story.

We’ll be showcasing lots of other great games in future posts as well as some holiday-themed ones to get you in the spirit. Stay tuned!

We recently held our first-ever, official Adobe Game Jam at the San Francisco office – and had quite the turn out with more than 40 attendees, including Zynga, Idle Games, Kabam and Buffalo Studios. The event far exceeded our expectations in every way and we kicked things off Friday night with a short demo session to level the knowledge playing field and allowed attendees – ranging from developers, designers and musicians – to select their teams. By Saturday, game development was well underway, and up for grabs were one-year Creative Cloud memberships.

To foster creativity, there were only two rules to follow: 1) ensure the game executed our theme, San Francisco, and 2) build the game using Stage 3D. The theme alone offered participants many visual landmarks and local cultural details to incorporate into their games (e.g., one of the winning games was based on a gay, roller skating Sean Connery escaping from Alcatraz).

The crowd judged the games in three categories – Best Art, Best Tech and Best Game. The winners of each category were:

Given the success – and fun of our first Adobe Game Jam – we’re looking forward more events, including the next one in Chicago on November 30. Stay tuned to our Adobe Game Jams events page for the latest updates: http://gaming.adobe.com/events/gamejams. Check out the recap video below:

Using the hardware acceleration enabled by the Stage3D APIs in Flash Player running in the browser, the team at Maid Marian was able to modernize Sherwood Dungeon to feature top-of- the-line visuals and responsive game play. By deploying the game in the browser, Maid Marian can now expand the revenue potential for Sherwood Dungeon as it can now be distributed through game portals that only support Adobe Flash® technology. Currently, Sherwood Dungeon is enjoyed by up to 3,000 social gamers simultaneously and more than one million unique players globally each month, attributable in part to the wide reach of the Flash Player on over 1.2 billion connected desktops.

The Maid Marian team looks to the future of the Adobe Gaming technologies and expanding their opportunity to grow their audience. “Marrying the ubiquity of Flash with GPU-accelerated graphics,” continues Endrody, “elevates the potential of browser-based games. We can now take on the big publishers with something small, independent, and disruptive.” Read more from Endrody here: http://adobe.ly/RajbRM.

A common refrain at the Adobe booth at GDC Online has been, “wait, that game is running in Flash? I didn’t know Flash could do that!” With games ranging from previews of high-end games running in the browser – like Herokon or Kings Road on Facebook – to great indie games already available in the AppStore like Wonderputt and Super Hexagon for the iPad, we had lots of amazing games to show off, and some great conversations. Developers stopped by to talk, try games out, and exclaim at the possibilities now available to them to get great 2D and 3D games to market.

While the draw was all the great games at the Adobe booth, it also gave the Adobe team a chance to show and tell developers how to deliver their C/C++ and Unity games in the Flash Player, and highlight how the soon to be released Adobe Flash Runtime C++ Compiler (flasCC) can help game developers cross compile their games to reach a global audience of over 1.3 billion desktops and over 500 million smartphones and tablets. Since the Adobe Gaming team took root last year, we’ve been talking to publishers and game developers at conferences and events throughout the country. We still have some more people to impress, but an increasing number of game developers and publishers are looking to Adobe to help with reach, game discovery, and monetization across platforms and devices, including the Apple AppStore, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore.

Adobe Gaming technology was also highlighted at the 2012 GDC Developers Choice Online Awards. Many of our partners were nominated this year, and chose to develop their award winning, cutting edge games using Flash Player and AIR because it works. We’re very proud of the nominees and winners who put their heart and soul into creating visually stunning and rich gaming experiences made possible with Adobe Game Development technology.

It’s been a great GDC Online, and a fantastic opportunity for the Adobe Gaming team to meet some new game developers as well as greet old friends. If you’re looking to build your own titles for Flash Player and AIR, check out our Adobe Gaming site at gaming.adobe.com to find out more, and see what your fellow game developers have already done with Adobe Game Dev technologies!

With the leaves changing color and cooler temperatures on the horizon, I always feel like fall is a great time to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year and take stock. Looking back at GDC Online 2011, I am incredibly excited about how Adobe Gaming has progressed over the past year!

At this year’s GDC Online, the Adobe Gaming team is thrilled to show off some of the amazing accomplishments from game developers using Adobe technology, including runaway indie game successes like Song Pop, Wonderputt, and Botanicula, along with Stage 3D hardware accelerated browser and social games from bigger studios like Square Enix’s Legend World, SilverStyle Studio’s Herokon, Zynga’s FarmVille 2 and Ruby Blast. Even if you’re not able to join us at the show, check out the new Adobe Gaming channel on YouTube – it’s jam-packed with demos, how-tos, and product previews that help you get started with 2D and 3D game development.

But that’s not all we’re showing off at GDC Online 2012, far from it! We’ll be previewing software codenamed Project Monocle, and demonstrating how this advanced profiling tool for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR can help developers gain much more insight into their code and increase their productivity. Believe me, you’ll never go back once you’ve seen Monocle :).

Two of our Adobe game superstars – Thibault Imbert and Renaun Erickson – will be demonstrating not only how developers can target the reach of the Flash Player, which is on 1.3 billion connected desktops, but also how super-charged 3D games like Madfinger’s Shadowgun and Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have begun to take advantage of that huge reach even though their games were developed using Unity. More details on their sessions on, “Adobe Gaming at GDC Online 2012.”

And if you’re inspired to develop your own game, don’t forget that you could win cash thanks to the Epic Flash Games contest happening now.

There’s a lot to show in Austin, and we’ll be posting some of the highlights later this week. In the meantime, check out the Adobe Gaming showcase, and tell us if you’ve got a great game you’ve developed using Adobe Game technologies!

Game Developers Conference Online 2012 is upon us! This Austin event brings together the best and brightest professionals in online, social and cloud gaming – and we’re excited to be a part of it. Our team will be there and speaking at two sessions you won’t want to miss!

From Stage3D development on the desktop with Flash Player, to cross-platform mobile development with Adobe AIR, Adobe is shaping Flash to be the console of the web. Join our own Sr. Product Manager Thibault Imbert to get an inside look at technologies, such as Stage3D (for GPU acceleration) and Project Monocle, and hear about their role in some of the latest gaming titles (e.g., Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) created. Register for this session here.

Building AAA 3D games for the web require many features, including GPU hardware acceleration, shader languages, audio, input, content loading, content caching, and full screen support. Gaming Evangelist Renaun Erickson will cover feature comparison of WebGL/HTML5, Flash, Unity and Google Native Client technologies, and highlight how developers are using them to push previously unheard of boundaries during his session. Be sure to attend – register here.

Interested in more about Adobe and Gaming? Get the full scope on Adobe Gaming. And, if you’re working on a Flash game or have an idea you think is really special, enter the Epic Flash game contest!

The web is generating a lot of buzz today, particularly with Adobe’s Create the Web event focusing on tools and technologies for the modern web! Speaking of the web, I’m excited to profile a couple of upcoming browser-based games from Japan and Germany. Thanks to the reach of Adobe’s Flash Player on over 1.3B connected desktops, these two games really show off where AAA and sophisticated, console quality titles are being brought to the social web with great success.

Square Enix Japan has just launched a teaser version of their upcoming social game “Legend World,” where users relive past gaming glories by battling boss monsters from older Square Enix titles. Thanks to the Flash Player and Stage3D, Square Enix Japan was able to take the actual 3D models and animations out of games they shipped to consoles, and put them directly into the browser. That means that you’re fighting the exact same boss that was in the original console game. While the game will only be in Japanese, you can check out the battle demo here, featuring Ring Wyrm from Final Fantasy XII on PlayStation2: http://member.square-enix.com/jp/gamezone/legendworld/battleflash/index.php

And for you MMORPG fans, Herokon Online is coming soon to a browser near you. Based on a German pen and paper RPG – Das Schwarze Auge – Herokon Online takes you into the world of Aventuria where players can role play numerous characters, with a wide variety of skills and attributes. The gorgeous graphics and over 6 million DSA players could be reason enough to entice you to sign up for the beta…even if you don’t speak German!